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A.Word.A.Day--svengali

noun: A person who manipulates and exercises excessive control over another for sinister purposes.

[After Svengali, a musician and hypnotist, in the novel Trilby by George du Maurier (1834-1896). In the story, Trilby is an artist's model. She's tone-deaf, but Svengali transforms her into a singing sensation under his hypnotic spell.
Another eponym to come out of the novel is the word for a man's hat: trilby. A trilby was a soft felt hat with a narrow brim and an indented crown. The word arose because such a hat was worn in the stage production of the novel.]

"Idol was created by Simon Fuller, the Spice Girls svengali, and first aired in England in 2001, as 'Pop Idol.'"
Sasha Frere-Jones; Idolatry; The New Yorker; May 19, 2008.

See more usage examples of Svengali in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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